Those who are forgiven much, love much ..a story from Korea

Recently I visited Fr. Raymond Spies in Anyang. He told me that, when one goes to Naju, he should not go just to see the Blessed Mother's tears and tears of blood but to reform his life based on her messages. I would like to introduce one soul who has become a new person thanks to the messages from the Blessed Mother of Naju.

I first learned about Naju through the Blue Army in 1987. It was before the Chapel was built. I wanted to do some good work and guided one poor soul to Naju. She was a 17 year-old girl by the name of Theresa. She quit school during her senior year in the junior high school (9th grade) and began leading a dissolute life. She not only smoked and drank but was into narcotics also. She was suffering from severe hallucinations. She became a prostitute. Her parents spent every day with tears and pains. People were avoiding her and deserting her as a delinquent person. I brought her into my house, thinking that she was Jesus or the Blessed Mother.

After we came back from a visit to Naju, we were reading the messages together. She asked me what sacrilegious communion (mentioned in the message on June 5, 1988) meant. I explained it in detail and asked her to examine herself. She said that sometimes she hid some of her sins during Confession because of shame and received Communion sacrilegiously. She shed tears of repentance. She has been reading the messages every day and makes frequent confessions. Before, when I asked her to pray the rosary together, she was trampling the rosary down. Now, she prays fifteen decades for the conversion of sinners. She is changing every day through the messages. She says that everything has changed 180 degrees.

Before, she almost went to jail several times for stealing, but now she refuses to take gifts of money, saying that she is afraid of committing sins if she had money. She does not watch TV or video any longer. She says that she promised to the Lord and the Blessed Mother not to watch TV or video. She is leading a life of offering up beautiful roses to the Lord and the Blessed Mother by making sacrifices and reparations, saying that she had more sins than anyone else. She is making strenuous efforts to practice the Blessed Mother's messages. She prays the rosary fervently for the teenage girls who are committing sins as prostitutes without knowing that they are committing sins. She says that she will spread the Blessed Mother's messages to those girls, too.

Gabriella Chang, Inchon

Vengeance or Forgiveness ?

An inmate at a jail in the Bronx had an interesting insight, distilled from his life experiences:- “When someone wrongs us, we want the maximum amount of punishment. But when we do wrong, we want the maximum amount of understanding and forgiveness.” As a teenager he was robbed of his paper round earnings of $27 by 3 older boys. He got a knife, found them and stabbed all three and this began his own criminal life.  His response or reaction to the evil inflicted on him took him down that same road.

A former inmate from Manila city jail that I met recently had a different story. He was framed by an acquaintance for a multiple murder, a forced confession under torture was obtained by Police officers eager for promotion and he was sentenced to death by electric chair. (This was during the Marcos era when the death sentence was still used). He spent the next 6 years on death row, mostly in solitary. During that time, through the Prison ministry and a life in the Spirit seminar, he had a conversion and was able to forgive the people who had contributed to his woes. He accepted all as coming from the hand of God, whilst still pleading for his life to the new president. Soon after, his appeal was referred to the Supreme Court and he was found not-guilty and released. Since then he travels between jails to reach out to inmates, telling his story and bringing them what little relief he can, grateful to God and compassionate to his brother inmates, whose sufferings he understands all too well.

How we respond to the evil we encounter in life has a profound effect on the result.

For the Lenten season this year I was inspired to pray for the people who had caused pain and suffering in my life, I decided to have Masses offered for the more malevolent and malicious among them. And as I prayed during these first weeks of lent, I found many names and faces from the past come up who still had some capacity to affect me as I relived the incidents and then prayed for them. For example I thought of a sadistic school teacher, a false friend, an overcritical work colleague, a bully during my school days. The worse they were, the more I pitied them. Forgiveness is a must as we need it too, from those we have wronged and of course from God.